


Fragile Shoulders

by amoama



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Fanmix, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:15:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2804117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoama/pseuds/amoama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Songs for Prim</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragile Shoulders

  


**About Primrose Everdeen & The Hunger Games:**  
The Hunger Games is a YA trilogy by Suzanne Collins set in a world where 12 Districts are ruled over by The Capitol. In punishment for a rebellion 74 years earlier, every year each district has to send two children to fight to the death in the Hunger Games. The one remaining child that wins the games gets to come home and live wealthily for the rest of their life.  
Prim is 12 years old at the start of the books and it is the first year she is eligible to be picked for the Hunger Games. Her name is called out but her older sister, Katniss, volunteers to go in her place to fight in the Games. The books follow Katniss's fight to victory in the Games and rebellion against The Capitol. Prim is left in the background, the motivation for her sister's fight. Katniss becomes more and more distant from her sister due to the pressures of life as a victor, with enemies she can never stop fighting. But Prim has her own fight back home with the people of the districts, inspired by the image of Katniss, and seeking their own independence from The Capitol's tyranny. Prim works with her mother as a healer, despite their poverty, they use what they have to help heal people. When they have to flee District 12, Prim gets the chance to train as a doctor in District 13, although she is still very young. In the end she contributes to the rebellion as a nurse and ends up being killed by bombs made by the rebels that get dropped on children in the Capital.  
Prim's death is devastating. Having escaped almost certain death in the Hunger Games, she has a life full of potential that is cruelly cut short. She is the face of all her sister has been fighting for and is lost at the last minute of the war.

 **What I love about Prim:**  
Prim is so in the shadow of her sister, I love to think of her finding her way and becoming her own person. Watching her sister sacrifice herself for her must have been hell but Prim emerges strong and supportive and capable. She is intuitive and compassionate and determined to fight in her own way. If she had lived I love to think of her and Gale growing together as Prim gets older. Their relationship is a close one, of mutual reliance, brought together by their love and fear for Katniss.

**About the mix:**  
The mix is divided a little bit so the first four songs are more Prim's feelings about her sister and the final five songs are about Prim caring for others, becoming her own person, and dying too soon. Quotes are from all three books.

  
[Listen](http://8tracks.com/theotheramo/fragile-shoulders-songs-for-prim)   
[Download](http://anonym.to/?https://app.box.com/s/t376kpoeun0s8r2w4s36)   


  
_Effie Trinket crosses back to the podium, smoothes the slip of paper, and reads out the name in a clear voice. And it’s not me. It’s Primrose Everdeen._

Warm my heart, set my hands on fire  
Hair on fire, dress on fire  
Oh I'm an angel, an angel on fire  
And I'm burning to escape the cold  
Try as I may to shine in the darkness  
 **Angel on Fire – Antony and the Johnsons**

_I protect Prim in every way I can, but I’m powerless against the reaping._

She left a week to roam  
Your protector's coming home  
Keep your secrets with you  
Safe from the outside  
Tell your brother to be good  
Tell your sister not to go  
Tell your mother not to wait  
Tell your father I was good  
 **Your Protector – Fleet Foxes**

You’re fireproof  
Nothing breaks your heart  
How’d you get so far  
You’re a million miles away  
You’re fireproof  
I wish was that way  
 **Fireproof – The National**

_“I’ll be all right, Katniss,” says Prim, clasping my face in her hands. “But you have to take care, too. You’re so fast and brave. Maybe you can win.”_

Don't hold this war inside  
You've done nothing at all to make me love you less  
You left your home, you're so far from everything you know  
Come back, I'll help you stand  
Let go and hold my hand  
 **Come Back When You Can | Barcelona**

_Prim, whom no one can help loving._

it blooms on while night is by.  
When day looks out with open eye,  
'Bashed at the gaze it cannot shun,  
It faints and withers and is gone.  
 **The Evening Primrose | Benjamin Britten, By Adolf Fredrik's Youth Choir**

_What are they doing now, my mother and Prim? Were they able to eat supper? The fish stew and the strawberries? Or did it lie untouched on their plates? Did they watch the recap of the day’s events on the battered old TV that sits on the table against the wall? Surely, there were more tears. Is my mother holding up, being strong for Prim? Or has she already started to slip away, leaving the weight of the world on my sister’s fragile shoulders?_

I'll be working so, so hard.  
So if your love seizes up, take my hand and take enough..  
take it all, you know I can break your fall.  
 **Breaking Falls | Dan Michaelson**

_Time and tragedy have forced her to grow too quickly, at least for my taste, into a young woman who stitches bleeding wounds and knows our mother can hear only so much._

Oh go, silent as death on the first day of the snow  
Oh go, leave these fires burning  
A house of embers and coal  
Oh, you laugh like there's hope in the story  
Oh, you laugh like I'll be there to hold you always  
 **Bones | Ben Howard**

_Sweet, tiny Prim who cried when I cried before she even knew the reason, who brushed and plaited my mother’s hair before we left for school, who still polished my father’s shaving mirror each night because he’d hated the layer of coal dust that settled on everything in the Seam._

I must go, I'll miss you so  
My time has finally come  
Don't despair, don't chase the air  
Where we once lived together  
Remember me, remember me as best you can  
 **Lifespan of A Fly | The Bird and The Bee**

_There's something else there as well, something entirely her own. An ability to look into the confusing mess of life and see things for what they are._

where does the time go?  
it hides in your eyes, in a picture, in another place's sky  
they're the words to a song I never sang.  
it's more than letters, it heals that bridge.  
 **More than letters | Benjamin Francis Leftwich**  



End file.
